Is OA (Gold) really a desirable goal for scientific journal publishing?

From: John Harnad <jpharnad_at_YAHOO.CA>
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2007 13:17:14 -0500

Seven Reasons why Open Access (Gold), as a policy objective, should be more
carefully scrutinized within the scientific research community before
proceeding to its advocacy.

First, the definitions:
   Open Access (Gold) means: a journal charging nothing for reader access to
electronic versions of articles published in it. This is to be distinguished
from Open Access (Green) which means a journal allowing, or encouraging the
simultaneous deposit of peer reviewed published papers in publicly
accessible, linked institutional repositories, or central repositories like
ArXiv.
   It is a pity that the same expression ^ÓOpen Access^Ô is used by many to
refer to both these policies, without making clear that two logically and
practically distinct concepts are being confounded. This may cause
misunderstandings which, in some instances, can camouflage a hijacking of
objectives. The ^ÓGold^Ô version of Open Access involves several questionable
implications for the scientific community, and those advocating it within
the community should seriously rethink its desirability.
    The main point to recognize is that the only mechanisms by which a
journal can operate in ^ÓGold^Ô Open Access mode are: 1) direct support
through public or other institutional grants, 2) advertising revenues, 3)
subscription costs for paper versions that exist in parallel with the free,
electronic versions, or 4) transferring the costs for a major share of its
overhead, and profits, to the authors. Charging only for the paper version
of subscriptions, when the electronic version is accessible to all for free
is, in most cases, not likely to be a viable way to cover costs or make a
profit. Therefore, the only candidates for this are, either: the authors, or
paying advertisers, or direct grants from public or private funding agencies.
    Of the roughly 2500 journals currently listed by the Lund University
Directory of Open Access Journals, a large number function by charging their
authors very hefty publications fees (e.g., those published by the OA (Gold)
publishers Biomed Central charge their authors ^Óarticle processing charges^Ô
that are typically of the order of $1500 US (1120 euros) per article). Some
(e.g., in biomedical research) have advertising revenues that are adequate
to sustain them, possibly when combined with professional association fees
and subscriptions. But this is not a feasible model in a majority of areas
of scientific research. In some cases, direct government support is adequate
to sustain OA (Gold) journals, but, for the most part, these are journals
having limited geographical scope, and little or no international standing.
There are also those that are effectively ^Óin-house^Ô publications supported
by a specific university department, largely through volunteer work, without
a paid full-time professional staff. These generally are also of rather
limited scope and distribution, serving a somewhat narrow segment of the
research community.

The following outlines seven reasons why OA (Gold) is currently unsuitable
as a general policy objective for the scientific community.

1) In most areas of research, no alternative to ^Óauthor pays^Ô or ^Ósubscriber
pays^Ô models currently exists that is compatible with maintenance of
quality. There do not exist sufficient direct grants from government or
other research funding agencies to publishers, nor revenues from private
advertisers, to allow a majority of journals to become either publicly
funded or self-supporting through advertising revenues.

2) There is a large variation across domains of research in the percentage
that would have to be attributed from available research grants to cover
publications costs if they were to be transferred mainly to the ^Óauthor
pays^Ô mode. In some domains, where the scale of research grants is very high
(e.g. experimental high energy physics and some domains of biomedical
research), this may be only of the order of 1-2%. But in others (e.g.
theoretical and mathematical physics), where research grants are available
only on a more modest scale, this could easily rise to 10-15% if applied to
all journal publications. Thus, these areas would be relatively penalized by
an order of magnitude regarding monies that must be subtracted from other,
^Ódirect^Ô research purposes.

3) Those researchers who do not have substantial research grants - which
includes those from countries that cannot afford high levels of research
support, and individuals from countries in which a highly selective process
of grant attribution excludes a large percentage of potentially active
researchers from the benefits of grant support - would be particularly
penalized by such a mode of charging.

4) It is highly unlikely that public (or private) funding agencies will be
willing to increase their budgets to cover such extra publication charges
for authors, even if they express themselves in favour of ^ÓOpen Access^Ô and
continue to allow this (as most do now) as a legitimate item within the
budget of a supported researcher. The implication is that the extra costs
for publication charges will have to be subtracted from other, current
research expenditures. For those, e.g., in the 10-15% category, this means,
effectively, a 10-15% cut in their ^Óactual^Ô esearch budgets.

5) The notion that ^ÓOpen access^Ô will miraculously cut the costs to
publishers, making it possible either to charge lower subscription rates for
paper versions, or more modest page charges than have been applied in the
past, is a fallacy. The erroneous logic behind this is based on the
expectation that, since electronic versions are much cheaper to produce,
reducing the volume of paper printed versions (or eliminating these
entirely) will greatly diminish the overhead of the publishers, making OA
^ÓGold^Ô much more cost-effective. This is simply confused thinking. Although
there is certainly a diminution of costs to be expected due to the
increasing emphasis on electronic publishing, this will be the case because
of ongoing developments in technology, and habits, not due to ^ÓOpen Access^Ô
or any other mode of cost-revenue balancing. If the journal is reliant
entirely on its electronic version, which is free, it has to generate
revenue somehow. The loss of income from subscriptions for OA ^ÓGold^Ô
publishers will be the overwhelming factor, pressuring them to transfer
costs to the authors. However, if this becomes the main source of revenue
for publishers, the rate for page charges can only become even higher than
in the earlier days of mainly paper printed versions of journals.

6) The notion that money that would be saved by libraries will be made
available to the researchers who will henceforth have to cover the costs for
producing journals from their research budgets is also, in most academic
settings, erroneaous. There is no mechanism for such a transfer. In most
academic settings, the sources and methods of distribution of funds for
these two purposes are completely distinct, and it is nothing but wishful
thinking to imagine that there will be an automatic adjustment that balances
a major transfer of the financial burden from one to the other. The high
costs, if they remain high, will simply be transferred from library budgets
to researchers budgets, without any adequate compensatory mechanism to
offset the change.

7) The quality of scientific journals would be negatively affected by
transferring the burden of costs from subscribers to researchers. This
mechanism is not likely to ever be applied universally to all journals in a
given field, and those journals which do not rely on hefty page charges for
their operation will, as in the past, tend to be the more prestigious ones,
where an author must provide an article that is of sufficiently high calibre
to justify its publication, whereas the page-charge journals, being reliant
on this income for their sustenance, will tend to accept lower calibre
contributions, provided the author is willing to pay.

    For the immediate future, taking into account the variations in sources
and levels of support available for funding scientific publishing across
different domains, a ^Óhybrid^Ô model with adequate choices and flexibility
would best serve the community. In some areas, either because of the
availability of advertising revenues, or very high levels of research grant
support, perhaps an OA ^ÓGold^Ô policy can be sustained. But in a large part
of the scientific research community, such a model would entail an
unjustified and unwise transfer of the burden of support for scientific
publication costs to the researchers and their existing resources.
   Given the currently available resources, a large-scale switch to ^ÓGold^Ô
Open Access is neither beneficial to the quality of scientific publishing,
nor in the interests of most researchers. This does not imply that the
^Óideal^Ô of Open Access (i.e. cost free access to the scientific community)
is not desirable or achievable. A large part of it can, however, be achieved
without transferring the cost burden to authors^Ò research grants, simply by
relying mainly on freely accessible data bases, such as the ArXiv, to
provide universal access. Naturally, such data bases do not provide the
^Óvalue-added^Ô or guarantee of quality that the peer-review refereeing system
does, and hence cannot substitute for it, nor do they, under present
conditions, provide adequate guarantees of long term preservation for
posterity. But the parallel existence of the two does both, provided the
peer reviewed, referee-based publishing journals continue to accept the
co-existence of such no-cost access to essentially the same body of
published papers, divested perhaps only of the luxury of standardized
formatting. It is up to the publishing authors - and in their interests - to
see to it that they do so.


John Harnad, Director
Mathematical Physics Laboratory
Centre de recherches mathématiques
Université de Montréal
Received on Mon Jan 08 2007 - 23:47:57 GMT